As anyone who knows me would attest to, I’m an extremely opinionated person.
I talk not just because I love the sound of my own voice but also because I love to talk about the things I love. I read comments and post on forums because not only do I love sharing my own opinion, I also enjoy reading the opinions of others, despite how ignorant some people can be.
Some call my outbursts of anger and frustration as “rage”. I call it passion. In truth, it’s a mixture of the two, but don’t mistake my passion and rage for hatred, because it’s anything but that.
I’m far from the only one who expresses their feelings and opinions in such passionate ways, but there’s a time and place for everything.
The biggest problem with being passionate is expressing that passion in a manner that isn’t foreboding and intimidating. I’m a very loud and obnoxious person and because of this my passion comes off as hostile rage when it’s not supposed to be. I’m angry, but not at the people I’m talking with. What I hope to achieve in this article is to inform people on why I get so upset and why I can look so angry about something people see as “trivial” (video games).
I’ve shared thoughts, opinions and outbursts of rage over pretty much any game I’ve ever played. From the original Pokemon Red and Blue series to my favourite game, Deus Ex, to more recent titles such as Mass Effect 3 or Diablo 3.
My frustrations on the games can range from very minor to very extreme but my arguments aren’t just meant to vent pent up anger, they’re also meant to be raw expression on why I believe something is bad. I’m a logical person and can usually logically deduce a bad decision from a good decision, but sometimes I come across bad decisions that are so blatantly obvious it makes me wonder if they were designed on purpose, because the only other option would be accusing the creators of being ignorant, and that’s not something I agree with.
I hate and rage on games not because I hate them but because I love them. I hate the iteration system used in most of Blizzard’s titles because it feels lazy and never actually works. I hate it because it makes class balance feel like a roller-coaster ride that has no end, because it doesn’t. You can iterate and iterate to the dawn of time, and the rollercoaster ride will continue to chug on.
I spat words of hot lava at Mass Effect 3′s piss-poor ending and at the idea that BioWare, one of my favourite game developers, could even write such tripe not because I hate BioWare or Mass Effect 3, but because I loved the series as a whole. Dragon Age 2 was in the same boat; I enjoyed most of DA2 but it was lacking in some areas that made the first game great, and so I told the world what I thought.
I get angry because I want these games to be the awesome games they could be. Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 were fantastic games. Sure, ME2 had some issues but overall it was fun. ME3 was fun too, incredibly fun and probably still worth the $80-100 USD I spent on it (NZ gets pretty jibbed on games) but the ending was so abysmally horrible. It took everything good about Mass Effect and destroyed it in front of the fans eyes, and that’s why we got angry. We wanted to love it, but we couldn’t.
From my perspective I’m not getting upset for no reason, nor am I getting upset over trivial things. I pay upwards of $80-100 USD in New Zealand for video games and so I demand good bang for my buck. Movie and book lovers expect the same quality for their money; it’s no different in the gaming industry. I’ve also spent a good 18 years of my life playing video games and plan to spend decades more.
Gaming is not merely a hobby for me, it’s a lifestyle, and I choose to live it because I enjoy it. Because I want to enjoy it. Because I want to have fun when playing a video game, be immersed in the storyline or captivated by the complexity but awesomeness of the gameplay. Live people who watch a movie, I want to be awed and amazed by the fancy effects, shiny graphics and big explosions I see on screen. I love all of these things about gaming but I also get frustrated at a lot of things, too. I rage and moan and write blog posts in the hope that someone will see it, agree, and try and change the way things are.
I’m passionate and I get angry because I love gaming, not because I hate it.